IDEA: Exploring Possibilities through Innovation and Design

In pictures: Building community, one project at a time

June 2014—text by Jenny Morgan, photography by Sandra Costello

At the beginning of the spring semester, each of the 30 students in the community-based learning course, Building Community, was asked to reflect on a single question: What, exactly, does it mean to build a community? “It’s a concept that gets thrown around a lot these days,” says Philip Hendrix ’14. “I took the course because I wanted to get a little more concrete about what it means to strengthen a community.”

Photographer Sandra Costello followed students in Building Community as they completed their community-based projects. Explore the photos by clicking on the image below.

Now a core requirement of the American Studies major, Building Community has been offered regularly since 2012. This spring, Center for Community Engagement director Molly Mead and the E. Dwight Salman professor of history and American Studies Frank Couvares (left) co-taught the course of 30 students. “From the beginning, we dug really deep into the definition of community,” says Gerald (Jerry) McLellan ‘16.

The humanness of music

Pioneer Valley Soundscapes expands understanding of music in the community

October 2013—William Cumpiano, a master luthier—one who repairs stringed instruments—poses in his workshop on the Northampton-Easthampton town line. Cumpiano was featured in A Taste of Music in the Pioneer Valley's Puerto Rican Community, one of the many documentaries in the Pioneer Valley Soundscapes archive. Photo by Thomas Sibley '10, story by Jenny Morgan.

In recent years, Assistant Professor of Music Jeffers Engelhardt has been on somewhat of a mission: to get people in the Pioneer Valley thinking “more expansively about the human involvement in music.”

In 2009, Engelhardt made real a piece of this mission by creating the community-based learning course, Pioneer Valley Soundscapes, to enable students to practice fieldwork and document the musical landscape of the region. For Engelhardt, part of thinking expansively about music has also meant blurring the boundaries between the campus and the community—and this spring, he’s introducing new technologies that will enable community participation in Pioneer Valley Soundscapes in unprecedented ways.

The world premiere of a local story: Garden of Martyrs opens September 20

On Friday, September 20, Associate Professor of Music and composer Eric Sawyer will debut his second opera, The Garden of Martyrs, at the Academy of Music in Northampton, Mass. When the opera opens, it will be in the same city where, some two hundred years earlier, the events depicted in the opera actually happened. For Sawyer, the power of sharing this local story where it occurred has “continued to sink in.”

Since its creation, faculty and students in the interdisciplinary department have grappled with the questions and problems that have shaped the United States. The department has a long legacy of being at the forefront of many national conversations.

In pictures: Stress under a microscope

Photos from Biochem 330's public presentation

Stress, it seems, is everywhere.

And while it certainly doesn't take a scientist to notice it, scientists across a range of disciplines are asking serious questions about just what all this stress might mean for our health. Students in Amherst College's community-based learning course, Biochemical Principles of Life at the Molecular Level, have brought their own questions to bear on the complex relationship between human health and stress. From the psychological effects of bullying to the anti-inflammatory potential of yoga, the 25 students of this upper-level biochemistry course designed and implemented their own inquires of how stress impacts health.

As part of their final research projects, students in the class presented their group research in a poster session open to the public. Dick Aronson, who co-taught the course with Pat O'Hara, notes that they intentionally structured the course to be a community. "In order to be healthy and learn well, it’s really important to have a sense of community and a sense of connection. We were pretty explicit from the beginning that we considered the class a community in itself."

Explore the spring 2013 semester community-based learning courses

This spring is going to be another banner semester for community-based learning at Amherst.

With fifteen courses to choose from, students will delve into topics ranging from desegregation in Cambridge, Mass. to hydrogeology in local watersheds. They will create original music, theater, and research. They will explore, teach, and learn from local communities.

Beyond Shangri-La, Tibetan oral history website, launches

An Unwanted Legacy: Mercury in the Connecticut River Watershed

May 2012—story by Jenny Morgan, photo courtesy of Anna Martini

Nearly ten years ago, Associate Professor of Geology Anna Martini took a group of students to the Connecticut River for what Martini thought would be a typical classroom assignment. They set out to investigate the deposition of inorganic mercury from Mount Tom, the coal-fired power plant situated between Holyoke and Easthampton, Massachusetts. After collecting both lichan from trees and sediment from a small lake along the river, the class analyzed their samples and found strikingly high amounts of mercury in both— and what began as a simple classroom experiment quickly became Martini’s newest area of research. Almost a decade later, the project has transformed into a multifaceted, interdisciplinary endeavor that involves both scholars and community stakeholders.